The growing demand for real-time streaming video on portable devices has highlighted the importance of multimedia multicast in mobile wireless networks. In many wireless networks (e.g., an orthogonal frequency division multiplexing (OFDM) communication system), a transmitter modem is typically responsible for encoding the digital information and modulating it onto an analog carrier signal, and subsequently, a receiver modem demodulates and decodes the digital information. For the receiver modem to successfully receive the analog carrier signal in such systems, the carrier signals need to be transmitted in a way that is comprehensible to the receiver's antenna(s) at a physical layer (PHY) level. In other words, the transmitter typically needs to customize the PHY frames of the data stream to the number and capability of the antennas equipped with the receiver in order to facilitate successful data communication.
With the advancement in silicon manufacturing technologies, a single mobile device may now be equipped with more than one antenna, and each antenna may vary in type. The use of multiple antennas at both the transmitter and receiver in a wireless radio network (e.g., to improve performance) is referred to as multiple-input-multiple-output (“MIMO”).